TERCEIRA DE TRÊS PARTES TROISIÈME DE TROIS PARTS
Let me say how pleased we are today that there is an increasing number of progressive groups in Canada from the faith communities, the labour movement, the environment, the development and other social justice movements calling for the Government of Canada to provide leadership in the adoption of a Tobin tax.
What is the Tobin tax? It is the brain child of Nobel Prize winning economist, James Tobin. As early as 1978 Dr. Tobin proposed the introduction of a tax on international financial transactions, a tax wisely proposed to be low enough not to have adverse effects on trade in goods and services but high enough to cut into the profits of currency speculators and thereby hopefully reduce the currency speculation that is causing havoc in economies around the world.
The world desperately needs to restore some balance after the mania of market fundamentalism which has gripped the world economy. In the 1990s we have seen the spectacle of the so-called risk takers: a 28 year old in red suspenders who can bring down a century old bank, a major private sector hedge fund engaged in billion dollar investments which has to get bailed out to the tune of $3.2 billion by the U.S. federal reserve fund to prevent a major global financial crisis, and currency traders making billions of dollars while wages for ordinary citizens stagnate or fall even in the most successful economies of the world.
Market fundamentalism in the nineties has meant idealizing the marketplace as something that can take care of everything that matters to people. When unbridled currency speculators turn the Asian so-called economic miracle into a financial crisis overnight, whole national economies were plunged into recession. Twenty-five million people sunk into dire poverty in Indonesia and Thailand alone. Thirty-five per cent of the world today is in recession, and as the contagion spreads to other countries like Brazil that percentage is increasing.
Why do we need a Tobin tax in today's market? The economic market was supposed to reward risk takers. That was the theory, to reward people who would put up their own money to build a plant, to develop a new product or to provide a new service to the community. That is the theory. However today's market rules are: do not bet your own money; hedge your bets; invest in the private market preferably offshore; get the public, in other words taxpayers, to bail you out if you get into difficulty; protect and hoard your personal wealth by sending it to a tax haven abroad. This has led to rescue packages for the super rich, impoverishment for the many, and diminishing capacity for the public through its elected governments to address the social problems left in the wake of market failures. Today the world desperately needs a strategy to ensure that the international economy serves the interest of ordinary citizens in the poorest countries that are being increasingly marginalized and in the wealthier countries where workers are launched in a race to the bottom. The Tobin tax is one way to rebalance risks, rewards and responsibilities, a way to ensure that those who benefit most from the market system take some financial responsibility for it.
George Soros, the billionaire financier who has made a fortune in international markets, describes today's global capital flows as a wrecking ball spreading indiscriminate grief and poverty around the globe:
There used to be a concept of civic virtue, but because of the sharpening of competition, people have become so involved in fighting for their own survival they cannot indulge their concern for the common good. The concern with the common good has been almost eliminated by allowing the markets to become the main forum for decision making.
According to the United Nations human development report the estimated cost of providing universal access to basic human services for all the world's citizens is roughly $40 billion per year, and $40 billion is a mere 20% of the revenues that could be collected through the imposition of a Tobin tax. Nations around the world could use the revenues generated to alleviate human suffering on a scale so vast that it would eclipse all our collective efforts for the past five decades.
When the G-7 nations met in Halifax in June 1995 regrettably the Prime Minister of Canada resisted the call for our government to provide leadership in building consensus in support of the Tobin tax. I think it is a positive development, a very welcome development, that today the government recognizes the Tobin tax is an idea whose time has come. The finance minister has recognized in the Tobin tax: The general taxing power to raise money for great international needs, whether it be problems of the Third World, the heaviest indebted poor countries, or international environmental problems. Surely a proposal with such potential cries out for political and international support. The finance minister was absolutely correct when he stated publicly almost a year ago today on national television that it would take a long time to get the rest of the world to sign on to the Tobin tax. To that I say let us get started by giving unanimous passage in the House to the motion before us calling on the Government of Canada to provide leadership to the adoption of a Tobin tax on behalf of all world citizens.
Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Ref.): Madam Speaker, all we need is the NDP to come to this place and suggest to these Liberals a new way of taxing us. As if we are not taxed enough, now there will be a new tax, and tax on tax on tax on tax.
I use that as my introduction because I think this is a wrong headed idea. We need a government that learns to live within its means, that perhaps stops subsidizing all the buddies of the politicos over there and giving them a bunch of our taxpayers money. The government just wastes it and avoids dealing with the real problems of the country, and that is jobs. Jobs are created by having less taxation on economic activity, less taxation on the people and the families of the country and less taxation on businesses, not more. We do not need more taxation.
What we have here is a motion by the member for Regina-Qu'Appelle. I will not question the hon. member's motivation. As a member of the New Democratic Party, the overt socialist party, he is very interested in seeing how he can get money from somebody who earned it-maybe it was not earned; maybe it was by speculation, which is part of the way of earning money-and give it to somebody who did not earn it. That is the whole agenda of the NDP. I remember a number of years ago I had an interesting debate with a member of the New Democratic Party. We talked about helping poor people. I said to him, and I will not use his name here because he probably would not like it-
An hon. member: He was a nice fellow.
Mr. Ken Epp: A nice fellow indeed. I asked him how much he gave to charity the previous year and he said nothing, that it was not his responsibility but the responsibility of the government. I said to him "Therein lies the difference betwixt thee and me. I believe in being generous with my money; you believe in being generous with everybody else's money". That is what is wrong in the whole premise of adding yet another tax on to people who are trying to make money.
Here is an interesting twist, though. A New Democratic member has proposed the motion and the motion has been amended by the socialists on the other side of us here. The motion says that the government should enact a tax on financial transactions in concert with the international community. This tax on financial transactions has been taken out in the wording of the amendment by the Bloc, so we will first be voting on whether or not to promote the implementation of a tax aimed at discouraging speculation on fluctuations in the exchange rate.
This was put forward by an eminent scholar, an economist, a Nobel prize winner who knew a lot, but I seriously question whether a small tax on a transaction will make any difference at all. Everybody who deals in the market, whether it is the money market or any other market, is quite willing to pay the transaction fee which accrues to the dealers. It does not discourage it at all. As a means of discouraging speculation, it is a wrong headed idea. We would have to put such a high tax on it to actually discourage the process that it would basically cause economic chaos around the world, as if we do not have enough of that already.
I would like to make a few comments on this tax. Generally what we tax we discourage. That is just simple human nature. I often think of my father who lives in a tax ridden province run by the NDP. He said when it brought in the GST, which was added to the PST, that it was one tax he could avoid. Whereas my father used to buy a new car every four or five years, he drove his car for ten or twelves years after that. I do not remember exactly how long it was before he traded it, but he said that he did not have to buy a new car.
As a result the GST and the PST discouraged him from entering into the marketplace and getting a new car. He just drove his old one. I think that was a good decision anyway. It was a perfectly good car. I will not do any free advertising for Oldsmobile here.
I remember reading about the Brits who at one time thought they were would tax rich people like NDP members always wanted. They say let us tax the rich so they leave the country like the finance minister does. He takes his business out of the country because he can get regime for taxes which is much more favourable. Let us tax these rich suckers so they leave and that way we will not have any jobs in this country. Everybody will be happy. This is NDP style.
The Brits came up with a wonderful measure of a tax for rich people. They would base it on the size, the total area, of windows in their houses. What should surprise us is that all the rich people who had homes with big windows boarded them up. The windows were not needed if they were to be taxed on them. That is so obvious.
What we have here is an attempt to manipulate human activity, whether it is an investment or elsewhere, by taxation. As far as I am concerned that is an unwelcome, unnecessary and immoral intrusion of government on our personal freedoms. We should be able to move in these areas without having government, through taxation or other means of coercitou.
Antigonish Guysborough Marceau McNally Mercier Mills (Red Deer) Muise Pankiw Penson Picard (Drummond) Power Price Ramsay Reynolds Ritz Schmidt Scott (Skeena) Shepherd Solberg St - Jacques Strahl Thompson (New Brunswick Southwest) Thompson (Wild Rose) Vellacott Volpe White (Langley - Abbotsford) White (North Vancouver) 83
Paired Members Anderson Assadourian Bulte de Savoye Debien Desrochers Folco Fournier Graham Longfield Patry Perron Pratt Sauvageau Speller Tremblay (Rimouski - Mitis) Turp Venne
The Deputy Speaker: I declare the motion carried.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear.
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